As regular readers know, I rarely put up anything more than excerpts on this site. The post below from the inimitable Scott Ott is so good, however, that I am putting it up whole.
"Just hours after the U.S. House passed legislation to extend “hate crimes” protections to people victimized due to their “gender, sexual orientation or gender identity,” a companion bill attacking so-called “ambivalence crimes” failed to get out of committee due to a tie vote.
Hate crime laws address the proven fact that a victim feels greater pain when he or she suffers as a representative of some downtrodden minority group, rather than simply as a person. However, nothing in federal law extends special treatment to a person whose attacker has mixed feelings about the victim’s race, gender or degree of sexual disorientation.
According to an unnamed Congressional aide who helped draft the ambivalence crime bill, “People are murdered every day in this country by perps who can’t be painted with a broad brush as racists or homophobes, because they only really hate particular members of those groups…mostly just the people they kill. It’s a loophole that needs closure.”
Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, praised the extension of the “hate crimes” law saying it would “bring justice to oppressed groups, especially to people of gender.”
I am rather prone to sarcasm myself but Scrappleface beats me hands down.
